two || ✓

ten || a mistake

"learning to forgive, even when it wasn't a mistake..."

-

A month has passed since Taylor had lost all that he had known about Hayley somewhere deep in his confused, darkening mind. A month since he had lost his ability to understand the girl whom he had never failed to love more than himself. A month since the once always cheerful Hayley had seemingly forgotten how to smile, how to laugh, how to be kind or respectful, how to act her age. A month since Taylor had wondered where the love of his life had gone, whether or not he could ever find her. But even after a month, he has not given up on his believe that, goddamnit, he still has time to do so.

"It's like she's. . ." Zac trails off, eyes focused on the girl seated a few chairs away from them in the small living area. Taylor glances at him. "Like she's a moody teenager or something."

Taylor could have interpreted his words as a joke or a mere insult, but he sighs as he slowly realizes how right Zac is. He risks a glance across the room at the girl in question, looking away as he sees her glare at and rip her shoulder away from one of the guys who had simply neared the chair in which she sat.

He listens attentively to the rest of the concerned man's whispered words, sizing them up to the furious girl mere feet away from them. "She just snaps at us whenever we try to talk to her or anything. I don't know what to do."

Taylor shakes his head, not bothering anymore with looking at the girl who has steadily used anger and annoyance and isolation and harsh rejection over the past month to break his heart.

"I don't know either, Z. But it's so obvious. It's like she's mad all the time — at someone, at the world, I don't know. It's not like she's trying to hide that there's something wrong. I just don't know what it is. Do you think. . . do you think something's happened, or—?"

Suddenly, before the anxious man can even finish speaking, Zac turns to the girl seated silently on the other side of the room. She doesn't look up when he speaks.

"Hayley, please," Zac says with exasperation, and Taylor simply stares, a lost look in his pained eyes. He watches Hayley ignore them both, showing no sign of even having heard them besides a slight tightening of the jaw and of her downturned lips.

"You know you can talk to us," Zac continues. He's tried to be more understanding, but Taylor can see how frustrated he has become — and understandably so, he thinks.

Looking at the silent girl, Taylor can't tell whether her frown gets tighter, or whether it has just seemed to do so for the decade-long month it has plagued her face.

"You're acting so differently. We know something's wrong." Taylor looks between the blank-faced girl and his worried friend, eyes darting between the two people he is so desperate to help.

And suddenly, Hayley's face contorts into more emotion than they've gotten used to seeing from her — more than they could have prepared for — but the redness in her cheeks and her sharp features are not nearly what the men had been hoping for.

She looks at Zac with a burning fire in her eyes as she snaps at the nervous man. "Shut up. You don't know shit."

Taylor tries to hide the shock in his face, but he finds his efforts useless. The furious girl rips her eyes away from Zac to look at him for less than a second, showing too many emotions for the utterly confused man to pick up on in the moment in which they are exposed.

Zac's eyes go wide. "Jesus, Hayles." Hers narrow.

"I can talk to you guys, can I?" She scoffs as she speaks, shaking her head and standing up to move away from the men who have so plagued her. "Then I'll say this. Fuck off."

Zac's mouth falls open as he stares at Hayley, who has since started to collect her things and leave the room. Taylor feels the sudden urge to grab her tightly, hold her close until he finds out what's wrong, what's hurting her pure heart in such a way, and destroys it, clears it from her suffering mind, but he does nothing instead. He wants to protect her and save her and bring her back to him, but what is he to do? He simply watches along with his best friend, as his other one leaves in a storm that both men find themselves so hopelessly lost in.

-

i know that anger is not the easiest emotion for me to write, but after it is done, it feels so relieving that i almost can't stop. i'm sorry that the darkness in these chapters is so heavily filled with it, but i felt it necessary and refreshing and addictive.

there are five chapters left, and, to me, they feel both like a slow climb up a life-threatening mountain and an agonizing descent down the peak of insanity.